Continuumix #2
https://continuo.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/continuumix-2/

The Last Poets opening sequence to ‘Right On!…’ LP, 1971, a collection of live poetry tracks recorded at Cubiculo Theatre, NY, ca. 1968. The mix of arrogance and charm from the Black Poetry movement is hard to resist.

Crass ‘Upright Citizen’ from Stations Of The Crass, 1979.
Inspiring lyrics go like this:
I’m sick of your pride, you think you can rule me,
With crappy judgement from your respectable majority.
Majority of what? You self oppressed idiot,
I’m not going to carry you, I’m no compatriot.
How many times do I excuse and forgive
The damage inflicted by the way that you live?
I hold my vision against your oppression,
Your final defence, your only possession.

Guy Chalon & Yuri Korolkoff ‘Mai 1968' single. May 1968 riot sounds as posted earlier on the blog. Confrontational mix and multi-dimensional sound effects fits nicely with previous track.

Michèle Buirette ‘Agoraphobie’ (excerpt) from ‘La Mise En Plis’ LP, GRRR, 1985. This avant accordion classy LP includes Hélène Sage and members of Un Drame Musical Instantané. Music exhudes frenchness and has lively arrangements and cunning production technique courtesy of Jean-Jacques Birgé from U.D.M.I. Michèle Buirette is a french accordion player. She later played in the Pied De Poule trio, also on GRRR. The track’s title means agoraphobia, an ironical juxtaposition with May ’68 protesters.

Michel Redolfi excerpt from ‘Underwater Concerts Live Recordings’, side C of ‘Sonic Waters’ 2LP box set on Hat Hut, 1984. Recorded at University of California Natatorium, 1983 – a pool with water heated to 90°F. Some have all the luck…

Jeff Mills ‘Global Factor’ from the Lifelike CD, a collection of early tracks by the Detroit techno master released 2000. Ultra minimal yet gorgeous sound crafting.

Allan Watts (1915-1973). An mp3 excerpt from the American philosopher’s conference ‘Philosophy of Nature’. I couldn’t resist chosing a passage on squares and boxes echoing Jeff Mills’ own square rhythms. More Watts mp3s here.

Pauline Oliveros ‘San Diego Zoo’ field recording made in November 1968 for the World Ear Project broadcast series. A 30-mns walk around the zoo early in the morning. Now how you connect this recording with Oliveros’s long duration accordion is another matter altogether. From Archive.org.


Led Zeppelin ‘No Quarter’, from the 1973 LP Houses of the Holy. The mellotron, guitar and piano nicely blends in this stop/start song.

Béla Tarr ‘Karhozat’ (Damnation), 1988. I hardly go to the movies but when I do it’s usually for a Béla Tarr film, though Damnation is not a favorite. A soundtrack excerpt from a scene taking place in the depressing Titanik Bar (you don’t suicide in Béla Tarr’s films, you just go down for ever) with insistent, melancholic accordion music for people to slowly dance around and the amazing voice of hungarian female actor pictured above.


Ross Bolleter ‘Nallan Void’ from the Austral Voices compilation CD on New Albion, 1990. Australian Bolleter is the ruined piano world specialist and is able to raise poignant notes from derelict instruments. The track was recorded outdoors and birds can be heard singing in the background.

GOL ‘Satanic Mushroom’ (excerpts). Electroacoustic bordello with low rumbles and undecipherable vocals by the French quatuor. From their self-released debut CDr ‘Corporate Mambo’, 2005 (downloadable from their site). They have collaborative discs with Iancu Dumitrescu and Charlemagne Palestine to be released in 2009. They performed live with Charles Hayward in December 2008. Fine resume, methinks.

Reines D’Angleterre ‘Bambi’. Ghedalia Tazartès’ new trio project Reines D’Angleterre adds weird electronics to his timeless vocals. Recorded at Tazartès’ home in 2008. Tazartès teams with EL-G from Belgium’s KRAAK label and Tanz Procesz label founder Jo Lang from Placenta Popeye band. From the 2008 Sonic Protest festival 2-CD set.

Ensemble 1870 is a Mexican contemporary gothic quatuor reviving the ghosts of European bleak prog rock bands Univers Zero and Shub Niggurath with up-to-date technology, vocoder, french horns and theremin for good measure. I used several excerpts from their MySpace page especially from the track called ‘Una Vendetta’. Pictured here is Hugo Luque (electronics). Thanks to reader Fueyo from Mexico for pointing me toward this amazing band.

The Clones ‘Conform to the norm’

The Big Boys ‘Brick Walls’
Both from the punk compilation ‘We Got Power: Party or Go Home’ LP on Mystic, 1983. Short but creative punk songs, the latter only 35 seconds long.

Helmut Lachenmann: ‘Auf der Strasse’. This is the opening sequence from the 2002 electroacoustic chamber opera ‘Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern’, one of Lachenmann’s masterpieces. The music aptly describes the coldness of an empty street on Christmas night where the Little Match Girl is freezing to death – she previously lost one of here shoes. What the instrumental ensemble plays here seems a striking equivalent of coldness. The opera is subtitled ‘Musik Mit Bildern’: music with pictures. This is the Kairos edition.

Robin Hitchcock ‘Winter Love’. Legendary british folk-rock songwriter. The song describes a frozen garden landscape and tentative love arising amid the icicles. Says Hitchcock: ‘This song was written during the last white Christmas in London… I believe it was 1981'.

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